It is the 1 year Anniversary of Foundation hitting Early Access on Steam and GOG!

To celebrate this important moment with you, we are releasing an Anniversary Update containing a special surprise!

After updating the game you can find the surprise under the Decoration building menu.

The update also contains some fixes and improvements to the recent Winter Content Update and you can see the changelog below.

That's not all! We are also giving away multiple game keys on Social Media. Like and comment on our Anniversary post on Facebook or Retweet us on Twitter for a chance to win a Steam key!

Finally, you can get 20% off the game in our special Anniversary Sale starting today on Steam!

If you would like to play and help shape the final stretch of development then it’s a perfect time to jump in.

A Year in Review

Both the team and the game have come a long way in the past year. The team has risen in number, recruiting some fantastic talent that is showing through in the gameplay, assets, and technical expertise.

The Hurricane engine is constantly evolving and improving with new in-house tools and optimizations to allow everyone to get the best playing experience. Gameplay and in-game assets have also been worked on heavily, with new and updated monuments, game mechanics and systems being introduced such as the recently expanded military missions.

We are extremely impressed by the display of love we are receiving from the community and this is fueling us to continue the work on further development on the road to the Full release.

Updated Roadmap

Hitting the 1-year Anniversary is also a great time to look at the future and what is in store for the further development of Foundation. You can take a look at our updated roadmap on Trello.

Road to Full Launch

Just as Foundation is organic, so too is Foundation’s development. As the game evolves, we are continually brainstorming and developing exciting new ideas that we are bringing to the game.

Ultimately, we want Foundation to be as we envision it, and with this in mind, we have decided to extend the Early Access development so that we can complete the roadmap and vision for Foundation.

We would like to thank everyone that has backed the Pre-Alpha and subsequent Early Access Alpha and for those who just bought the game, welcome!

With the Winter update and bonus Anniversary update now out and running smoothly, you are probably wondering what is next for development. The next update will be a good chance for us to consolidate on the work we have already undertaken and with this in mind we are looking at many Quality of Life improvements and minor bug fixes. There will be more content to come, of course, and we will be bringing more news on the next update in the coming weeks.

So, on to the devlog! Let’s find out what the team has been working on for the last few weeks.

Update planning

Phil, our Creative Director, (and CEO) has been busy planning and designing the content for the next update as well as refactoring the event system, a long due task, to make it more user-friendly. He has also been working on ‘some boring admin stuff’.

Statues and new production lines

Loup-Gabriel has been working on new production lines, that center around quarries and new extractable resources. Those quarries will be a major part of the next content update. Stay tuned for more details soon!

A WIP Quarry:

You may have noticed the new statues in the recent anniversary update, these statues not only add aesthetics to your villages but also increase the desirability of an area. More statues are still to come and Loup-Gabriel has been at work on a whole selection of new statues covering the 3 different estates.

QoL improvements

As mentioned above, we are looking at QoL improvements and Christopher has already made great progress on improving and fixing many of the in-game notifications.

These improvements will, for example, allow the player to easily focus on and cycle through villagers that are lacking housing or cycle through workplaces that have no workable zone, more easily identifying workplaces that require the player’s attention.

The immigration notification has also been adjusted to pop-up when new villagers reach the village centre rather than when entering the map. The Global Happiness tooltip has also been improved to show every factor affecting happiness.

Chris has also been working on expanding the Bailiff's functionality to give it more depth. This is still very much at concept stage and there will be more news on this in a future communication.

Animations

We are always looking to improve on the (not so) little details that bring your villages/cities to life. A big part of this immersion comes from the animations and Michaël has been busy on new animations for workplaces and more finer details.

The sawmill will see new hewing and saw animations. The Charcoal hut now has workplace animations for both shoveling and process monitoring with a 3rd animation in the works.

Monks will now take care of their bees and hives in the Apiaries.

He has also been working on those finer details such as animated cloaks for the envoys as well as animations for an upcoming feature which we have already hinted at in the Audinity Q&A feature recently.

Villager life cycle

Those of you that have checked out our updated Roadmap https://trello.com/b/i5AX944p/foundation-roadmap may have spotted the entry for Villager Lifecycle and Aging. Though still in its infancy (pun intended), Vincent has been working on both the older generation of villagers and has now moved on to the younger generation. With new facial aging and hairstyles, your villagers will become more diverse and varied. As mentioned this feature is still in the early stages of development and will be for a later update.

New UI

Work is continuing on a large project that will bring a fresh new look to Foundation. The new UI is coming along well and Ben has been working on improvements to the Hurricane engine to facilitate the creation of the new UI design, as well as allowing for quick styling changes and future improvements.

Claudine has also been working on preparing the new UI, testing new concepts, color variants and cleaning visual elements as well as other work on improving in-game textures and other concept art and feedback on new assets.

Modding improvements

Modders will be happy to hear that more modding improvements are coming. Maxime has been working almost exclusively on exposing more features and improving modding capabilities.

We have previously introduced the ability for modders to create custom components and now we are looking to expand upon this by allowing modders to create more custom features such as custom workplaces. In order to do this, Max has been working on creating custom modding classes as well as exposing more classes and features for modders.

Hurricane engine improvements

And finally our technical director, Léo, has been working under the hood, improving the engine. Improving performance as well as adding to the aesthetics of the game. Improvements to grass are underway and Léo has been experimenting to improve the near/far blending and handling of more grass diversity for an improved landscape.

We are excited to announce that we will soon be bringing you a new update, that we have named, the Minerals and Craftmanship Update!

The update is nearly ready and the full release will come in a few weeks but in the meantime, those of you eager to take an early look will be able to test some of the new features, in an upcoming Preview build!

More news on the preview build and how to gain access will be coming in the next few days.

Please note: Though custom maps will still be available, we are looking to gather focused information and feedback on the new content. Therefore, for testing purposes, the preview build will be focused on the Valley map.

If you would like to help out and share your feedback with us, then firstly, thank you! All feedback is very important and useful to us and in the development of the game.

Please let us know what you think of the preview build via this feedback form after release of the preview build.

Minerals and Craftmanship Update: preview build 1.6.0

We are bringing a multitude of changes and improvements in this update and you can check out some of the highlights that will be playable in the Preview Build, below.

Discoverable resources

One of the biggest and most exciting new features coming with the update are discoverable resources that will need to be prospected to know what kind of mineral they contain. Once prospected, you will be able to build a quarry over the mineral source to extract it. Some of these resources will be common and found in multiple nodes however some will contain more rare minerals.

New buildings capabilities

Prior to this update, there were two building types: single buildings and monuments. In this update, they now all have the same capabilities. This means a single building could have parts added to extend its functionalities. The first single building to exploit this new feature is a new one: The Builder’s Workshop.

At last, builders now have their own workplace! This building will be extendable to add new artisan workshops with crafting capabilities, like the scultpure or stainedglass workshop.

Artisan workshops

Parts that need more detailed, artistic work, like stained glass and sculptures will need to be first crafted in artisan workshops from the extended Builder’s Workshop. These artisan workshops will take advantage of the new resources that will be available to you in the discoverable resource nodes and the workshops themselves will allow you to create all new unique parts and Masterpieces for your village.

Masterpieces

Masterpieces are outstanding pieces of art that need to be crafted by artisans and that will provide a lot of splendor. More details on this soon...

New production chains

The workshops are going to require processed materials that will form part of new production chains. One such discoverable resource you will be able to find is gold ore which will require smelting into gold bars via a Goldsmelter before being used in your artisan workshop

An improved role for the Bailiff: The Bailiff Mandates

The bailiff will be introduced earlier into the game than previously and, for a cost, will be able to accomplish mandates for his lord. Among other things, he will be able to prospect for minerals and study blueprints.

Path inside buildings

One feature we have wanted to push for a while is the capabilities for villagers to use doors that communicate with one another. As such, villagers are now able to path through buildings by entering a door and going out from another. For example, Monks will be able to path through enclosed Cloisters, or villagers will be able to access enclosed courtyards via an inner courtyard entrance/exit but only through buildings that they are allowed to based on certain rules.

Multiple gameplay and feedback improvements

The Minerals and Craftmanship Update is a good time to consolidate on the work so far in the game and as such you will find many Quality of Life improvements some of which you will be able to see in the preview build.

There is now a new notification panel that will make it easier to track quests and keep an eye on issues in your village.

As noted above there are new building capabilities. To keep things consistent, all buildings will be placed and built in similar building workflow fashion to monuments. i.e. Placing a building will require that you also choose to start construction. You can still use shift + click to place multiple buildings which will bypass the requirement to click “start construction”.

We have also introduced another new change to the way you create monuments. You will first need to place a building marker before placing any parts to a monument. This building marker can then be moved and in doing so will allow you to move your whole blueprint before final placement and construction.

Grass has seen improvements in this update with a greater variety to shades and depth giving a more realistic look to grasslands.

Other improvements include cleaning up placeholder text, {img1} as well as new sounds and new animations.

New modding features

The new update will bring some huge features for the modding community which will allow modders much more freedom to create new assets, behaviours and also make changes and extend vanilla components and functions.

The preview build will include the ability to create custom behaviour trees and nodes. This will enable modders to use both our existing nodes as well as define their own nodes when creating new behaviours for villagers.

Custom assets, as well as custom structures, will now be available for use by modders. This means that modders will no longer be confined to using our asset types and can now define their own. Complex data related to these assets and components can then be stored in custom structures.

All of these additions and changes will allow much more flexibility for modding. As an added bonus we will also be opening up our own core components to allow some engine and game structures to be extended. This will allow, for example, new bridge building functions or workplace building functions to be assigned to core components.

Can you imagine the potential horrors, such as an 'Antenna farm' mod?!

You will be able to see all the new modding changes in the release notes and changelog here, on release of the preview build.

More to come

Although the preview build will already be jam-packed full of new content and improvements we will continue to add more as we work toward the full update release.

In the meantime, stay tuned as we will be releasing the preview build soon!

Minerals and Craftmanship Preview Update 1.6.0.0522 is now Live!Fri, 22 May 2020

Happy Friday everyone!

Just in time for the weekend, the Minerals and Craftmanship Preview Update 1.6.0.0522 is now Live!

We are looking to gather focused information and feedback on the new content. Therefore, for testing purposes, only the Valley map is available to play in the preview build. To get the full experience of the preview build we have also limited the save files on the preview build so you will need to start a new game that you will then be able to save and load as normal in the Preview.

Note: Custom maps are still available however these will not currently contain the resource nodes that are part of the update.

Mods will also require updating by the mod creators and modding community and will not be immediately playable.Let us know what you think...

We hope you enjoy the Preview and we would love to hear what you think.

You are, of course, also welcome to discuss the game and report bugs as usual on the Steam discussions forums or join us on our Discord server.

Thank you in advance and we look forward to hearing from you and reading your feedback!

Changelog

We have a bunch of new features and content included in this preview build of the upcoming update. You can find a changelog below and more detailed information on some of the new content can be found in our previous announcement here (above post)

Gameplay

New features• New minerals sources that can be prospected and extracted• New production chains related to minerals• Buildings can now have multiple placeable parts• Builder now has his workshop• Builder's workshop can be extended with crafting extensions• New unlockable builder's workshop parts• New crafting feature: craft sculpture, stainedglass and jewels (not all available yet)• Bailiff can have mandates assigned like prospecting minerals and influencing estates• New notification panel• Pathing can now go through buildings that have multiple entrances• New customizable fountain

Improvements• Parts that are built instantaneously activate its function, thus, no need for an entire monument to be built before it becomes usable• Church capacity is now considering multiple cores• Gold has been separated in two new resources: Gold Coins and Gold Bars• Improved performance when editing a monument• Transporters will now carry materials to construction sites• New uniformized build flow between buildings and monuments

Modding• Add mods hot-reload with Ctrl+Shift+R• Add creation of new asset and data types, and extending existing asset, component and data types• Add creation of behavior trees and custom behavior tree nodes• Add access to events• More details can be found on the wiki

Preview build access instructions

If you would like to take a look at the Minerals and Craftmanship Preview build you can switch over to it via the Steam Betas in your Foundation properties.1. Choose Foundation (Steam Library)2. Click Manage (Cog)3. Click Properties4. Click Betas (tab)5. In the “Select the beta” dropdown choose Preview (If you don’t see the preview option restart Steam)